Things I've Learned: Baker Harrell

The founder and CEO of It's Time Texas talks his mission to make Texans healthier

interview by Sarah Thurmond | photo by George brainard

Published: January 4, 2018

Baker Harrell is on a mission to make Texans healthier. Through his Austin-based nonprofit It’s Time Texas, he works with health-care groups across the state to improve the lives of people in historically marginalized and underserved communities by providing greater access to nutritious food, fitness programs, and medical services. With rates of obesity and diabetes on the rise, he believes that time is waning if we’re going to turn around this looming crisis.

You received your master’s and doctorate in health education at the University of Texas. Is that how you came to start your nonprofit here?
I grew up in rural Mississippi, so I know what’s it like to grow up in a place where you have very limited resources, and you’re actually discouraged from breaking free from the traditional ways of thinking and doing things. I felt like Austin was really the first time I felt freed up and not just free but really encouraged to be different, to do things differently, to question how things have been done, and to be unafraid to try something new. … This community has just been so incredibly supportive. Every day I meet people who inspire me, I feel connected to in sort of an unspoken way. We all have this similar ethos about how the world could be and should be, and we’re all in our own different ways doing our part to make our little corner of the world better and a model for other places across the country.

Now, with that said, there’s still some really significant issues that need to be confronted in Austin. Austin is a very segregated place in a lot of ways. You would think growing up in Canton, Mississippi, where I grew up, would be a more segregated community than Austin, but actually that’s not true. I think we are increasingly a community of the haves and the have-nots, and there are real equity challenges, especially around health, and access to health resources and services, so Austin still has some challenges and some parts of its past that are ugly that it has to confront.

What inspired you to start your path toward better health?
I was overweight for most of my childhood, until I hit the age of 11. I was ending my fifth grade year and about to start my sixth grade year, so it was the summer. My mother took me to the mall to buy new clothes because I became too heavy for the clothes I had. I hated going shopping because that meant I had to stand in front of a mirror and confront my reality, which was so painful for me. We walk into the store and the salesclerk comes over and asks if she can help us. My mother says we need some jeans. She walks me to the Husky section. Husky is a brand, and it was the bane of my existence. My only goal in life at 11 years old was to not have to wear Husky jeans. It essentially was putting a label on the “fat” kid. So I said, “No, ma’am. You’re mistaken. I don’t need Husky jeans. I’ll just take your largest normal size.” She looked at me out of the side of her eyes, rolled her eyes, and took me over and got me the largest normal size jeans. And of course they didn’t fit. So my mom comes back to the dressing room, concerned that she lost me because I was in there so long. And she opens the door and finds me in the corner crying. It was really the first time that she saw how much I suffered from being overweight. It was like my rock-bottom moment at 11.

What did she say to you in that moment?
Being the incredible mother that she is, she said, “Son, you’re going to have to lead this for our family. I’m going to help you every step of the way, but you’ve got to lead this.” For an 11-year-old, it was so strange to have a parent say that, right? I was the type of kid where that was transformative, that was a challenge that I could accept. It was an opportunity for me to not just help myself. I needed a cause. This couldn’t just be about me. Because if it was just about me I’d be in the same situation I’d be in when I wanted to lose weight previously. My mom gave me a cause.

What did you do when you took on this challenge?
I got up every morning and started walking. I got to where I could jog 2 miles. We didn’t have a Whole Foods; there was no internet. We had Jane Fonda and Richard Simmons. So we had to figure this out on our own. My mom started to create these healthy recipes, and she actually created a cookbook. That summer I lost a little more than 30 pounds. But the really cool thing that happened was that my family completely transformed. We all started exercising and eating differently. Then our neighbors and our extended family. We went from not seeing anyone walking to more and more people taking this lifestyle on.

Austin is considered a fitter city than most. Is there any myth, though, to our being a model of health?
It depends on what part of Austin we’re talking about, right? I would say overall no, because the inequity and the disparity are pretty stark. In order for us, I think, to earn that title or tag, we have to do more to reduce these disparities and inequities, create more opportunity for people to lead healthier, happier, more productive, more united lives. There are certainly parts of Austin that are very fit, and you typically see those parts in the affluent areas. But it’s a shock to most people in Austin when they find out that nearly 60 percent of all Austin adults are overweight or obese, and more than a third of all Austin kids are overweight or obese. So we still have a ways to go … I do think Austin could be a model for the country, but only if we face up to some of the hard truths about our past and commit as an entire community to reducing these disparities.

What are some health issues that really concern you?
The diabetes epidemic that’s looming, about 10 percent of the adult population in the state has been diagnosed with Type 2. Those are just the folks that we know. Type 2 used to be called adult onset diabetes. Now because so many kids and adolescents are getting Type 2, they had to change the name. It was a total outlier 20, 30 years ago to see a child with Type 2. Now it’s increasingly become more and more normal. So diabetes is incredibly expensive to treat, a very low success rate. The epidemics that are coming behind overweight and obesity are even more problematic because they’re more complex, harder to treat, lower success rate, and they’re exponentially more expensive. So we truly are staring down the bankrupting of our healthcare system. We can barely afford it now. We can’t sustain it. So obesity costs Texas employers a little over $10 billion right now.

What’s in that cost?
Productivity, medical costs, all of the different dimensions of someone being unhealthy, sick. By 2030, obesity alone is projected to cost employers more than $32 billion a year. So it’s more than a tripling of the annual costs. Who absorbs that? Well, the employer base can’t absorb that so that gets passed on to the taxpayer, and the tax base can’t absorb that. So everything starts to unwind at that point. That’s 12 years from now if current trends continue. So that’s why we named the organization It’s Time Texas.

More like “time’s up.”
Right. Time really is the enemy. Overweight and obesity, those are symptoms of the problem. The enemy is that we have engineered health out of our society, truly in almost every way. It’s time for us to engineer it back in to turn that around.

If a person could do one thing a day to start a healthier lifestyle, what would you suggest?
I would actually encourage them to start with their why. Why is their health important? For me, as an 11-year-old, it wasn’t about my jeans. It was about having the chance to change the trajectory of my family. My family became my why. I would say if it’s not someone other than yourself, that’s OK, but it’s probably insufficient. You’re missing an opportunity to do more and be more.

How do you stay motivated to be a healthy person?
It’s hard. I have two under 2, work long hours, and travel a lot. I’m still that little overweight boy when I was 11. Food is a natural sort of salve for me. Those are imprinted behaviors that I have to confront every day. But what keeps me motivated is everyone who I have inspired in some way to lead a healthier lifestyle….It’s all the people who I’ve been able to touch through this cause called health and who have forever changed my life. They motivate me. My own health is just a bonus.